Paths
by Chloe Silvers
Summary: What if Clark had gone back to save Jimmy with the Legion Ring? Tragedy.


Paths

Summary: What if Clark had gone back to save Jimmy with the Legion Ring? Tragedy.

It's the same old beginning that she used to get the ball rolling on her old stories- it started out as an average day. Wake up, sometimes depressed, sometimes not. Get ready, drink coffee, head over to work, and everything seems as normal as she could expect it to be when a single phone call changes everything.

He used to tell her a lot of things. He joked around with her once or twice, asking for a good luck kiss before they left for a mission, knowing that Bart was looking for an excuse to ask for one too. That didn't stick, but he tossed her a headset once, gave her a codename and a job that seemed to.

But what the stories don't say, and what he never mentioned, was that Chloe was listed in his phone as emergency contacts. That on a seemingly ordinary day, she would be called on her way home from work from an unknown number, with a woman on the other end of the line, telling her to get to Metropolis General Hospital right away.

There was no warning that one day, she would speed to Met Gen, run over to the front desk, just to be shooed out of a room in the Intensive Care Unit. There was no telegraph, smoke signal, text, email, kryptonian visitor, or message telling her that she would have to watch out in the hallway as a swarm of people in scrubs rushed into the room that she was pulled out of trying to resuscitate him.

Chloe had alien intelligence inside of her body for a good part of a year, and out of every outcome and scenario of how her life would go, she never thought that this would happen. That some person with a face that she couldn't comprehend, a face that she wouldn't let herself see would come out into the hallway and tell her that he didn't make it. That there was nothing that they could do.

That hours later when the paperwork had been filled out, she would find herself facing her greatest fear and ending up in a morgue again, unzipping the body and pressing her hand on the cold chest, trying to heal him over and over again, crying and shouting at him, and angry that something as stupid as this could take him.

Daring him to come back to life and tell her to stop being dramatic, to belt out the soprano's aria and dig that knife into her corset.

It was days before someone noticed that she had gone missing. She tried to fight them all, tried to prevent a press-release to go through, tried her best to keep them away from his body so that they wouldn't do an autopsy, but she had failed.

They all told her that it wasn't her fault, that there was nothing that she could do. But the truth of the matter was that it was.

She was responsible for the death of Oliver Queen, and there was nothing that she could do about it.

See, it wasn't an ordinary day when she changed everything. Just the opposite- Lois had come back from the future, Clark magically showed up again, and a kryptonian assassin told him that he would be responsible for the end of the world.

Chloe learned that Lois came back with the Legion ring, left it behind in the very hospital that Chloe was in when she heard the final news, and she took it to Clark, asking him to bring back Jimmy. Told him that it wasn't his time to go, that he still had a full life to live.

Technically, the memory never happened, but Chloe stood here now, the cold wind hitting her face, able to recollect it all, bit by bit.

"I'm not a god, Chloe. The last time I changed fate, my own father died. He died right here in my arms because of me."

She should have ended the discussion right then and there, but she couldn't. She was too mad, too upset at him, and after all of these years, she knew that Clark only brought up the past when he needed to.

But that wasn't how it worked, at least not according to her. Because she was there at Jonathan Kent's funeral, was around the day that he died, and was there when everybody else left. And at the mention of the man, something inside of her remembered them all.

She was mad at Clark for bringing him up, because she lost Jimmy more recently, and the only thing that she could thing to fix this was to go back. "Clark, I understand that, but when it comes down to saving people, we need to right our own wrongs first."

"We need to move on", he told her.

And then, something inside of her snapped. Weeks of holding on to the possibility of seeing him and Lois again, of trying to find them both around the clock and not speaking at all because she had nobody to talk to broke.

"Well, I'm through with moving on!" She exclaimed, ignoring the shock that appeared on Clark's face. "I'm through moving on because my mom left or because my father decided to start a new family. Every relationship that I started in high school ended because someone tried to kill me, and everyone who helped me to get over the people who left are gone, Clark."

"I understand that you're upset, Chloe, but you don't have to"

"Actually, yes I do", she interrupted. "Because even though you know, you don't seem to truly remember them. Pete moved away. We don't even know where Lana is these days, and you're never going to be in a condition where you can go on a global search to track her down. Lionel?" She let out a small laugh, remembering a time when she was able to see the elder Luthor in a prison cell. Jailed and messed up in the head, but still alive. "Lionel is dead. And remember Lex? Lex was twisted, but you were friends with him at one point. You saved his life time and again, regardless of what he did to you, and now, he's gone too."

"I don't need a reminder, Chloe", Clark said forcefully.

"Are you sure about that?" She asked, standing her ground. "Are you willing to let this cycle continue time and again? Is that what the future holds for you? Lois was almost killed because of an assassin from the future today, and other than me, she's the only one left."

"Nothing is going to happen to Lois", he said firmly.

But after watching someone post Lois' missing person's bulletin, after calling the Metropolis PD day after day, morning and night, Chloe learned that she wasn't able to do much in saving the people that she loved by herself.

"It's like a never-ending curse in our lives, Clark", she said, tears flowing freely. "And I know that if we can just break it somehow, it will stop."

Chloe remembered reaching into her pocket, feeling the cool metal in her hand and holding it out for her old friend to use. "Take it."

Clark took it from her hand and studied it before letting out a sigh. "He won't make it a second time around", he told her. "If he dies later, or if someone close to us dies in his place, there's no going back."

"I know", she said. "We just have to try."

"This isn't happening again, Chloe", he told her. "If he dies later, I'm not using it again."

"Thank you, Clark", she breathed.

She wanted to hug him in that moment, to tell him that she suddenly wasn't sure if she wanted to do it, but she didn't. He turned away from her. "Never ask this from me again."

A bright light filled the room, and Chloe knew that he was about to disappear any second. "Thank you", she shouted before he disappeared completely.

Chloe took a deep breath of brisk air now, wishing that she could go back to that moment and take it back, stop herself from being so stupid. Because even though Clark came back and she wanted to run away somewhere far away with a surprisingly memory intact Jimmy Olsen, she stayed here alone, shivering as he was somewhere else in the world.

Jimmy was alive, and Oliver Queen had died 78 hours ago of alcohol poisoning. And nobody was around to save him. Turning back time hadn't stopped the guilt that was deep inside Oliver's soul, because Lex Luthor was still dead.

Oliver thought that a life was a life, that even though Lionel Luthor was dead, he was still responsible for the murder of the happy family life that died in a plane accident years ago, and if Lionel couldn't be held responsible, then Lex could.

Oliver bought out Lex's company the instant the man was declared missing, slept with his successor, and killed him the second that he found him, and pinned the death on a crazy person who was already wanted for murder. He did it all with an even temper until Chloe told him that it was murder. It got worse before time changed, because Clark told him that he wasn't part of the team anymore.

And in focusing on keeping Jimmy safe, Chloe didn't keep an eye on anybody on the team. She wasn't there to get Oliver out of trouble that he purposefully put himself in sometimes just to see if someone was out there.

Chloe knew that if she had planted a camera on his person, then she would have gotten some sort of glimpse on her computers when it happened. Alcohol poisoning wasn't lethal as long as the person got to the hospital as soon as possible to get their stomach pumped. Instead of rushing to the Clock Tower and driving him to the hospital to help him, she was worried about making sure that Jimmy had changed locations safely.

Oliver walked his way until he was three blocks away from the hospital. He passed out on the ground, and the doctors couldn't save him. Chloe read his medical file and read the autopsy.

She knew that it was her fault this time- with Jimmy, she wondered how she could have gone about things differently, but this time, she knew for sure what she should have done. She should have been mad at Clark, dropped the Legion ring on the floor, driven to her apartment, and eaten gallons of ice cream. But this time, she knew exactly what she should have done, and she couldn't go back.

Chloe knew that the only thing that she could do was move forward, that it was the reasonable thing to do, but she had no idea what she was supposed to move forward to. The team wouldn't look at her the same way again, especially if they knew the truth. And she wasn't able to live with herself now.

She stood up on the roof now, doubting that this was the kind of thing that Jimmy had in mind when he bought the building. Chloe was wearing a green leather jacket in honor of the hero that she had killed, but it wasn't keeping her warm. Nothing now could settle her nerves.

She stood on top of the gargoyle, looking down on the city one last time before taking a breath. She closed her eyes, and jumped off of the roof as the Watchtower.

There was a sinking sensation in her stomach, and she felt the cold wind rushing through every cell in her body as she descended. And as much as she wanted to open her eyes, to see what was going on, she couldn't.

She kept her memory of what had happened before and after the world changed. Maybe that was why she could see what was flashing in her head.

***Flash***

She felt the warmth of his body pressing against hers as the bow clattered on the ground as he kissed her back, wrapping his arms around her and lifting her up off of the ground.

***Flash***

"Make it a Queen."

***Flash***

"I'm wearing green leather", he told her with a smile on his face. "But I'll do my best."

***Flash***

"How about we start with girlfriend", she said, pausing. "And then go from there?"

***Flash***

"I love you!" She shouted immediately through the walkie-talkie.

***Flash***

"I don't know why, but I have this feeling that I'm not going to make it past tomorrow", she said, her eyes drifting to the red sun. "If something happens, you need to make sure that Lois gets back. Promise me."

***Flash***

"You saved my life, Chloe, both the myth and the man."

***Flash***

"Don't worry", she said, putting her hands up in defense. "I didn't say anything to Lois, although you might want to consider..."

***Flash***

"How about we go home, Mrs. Green?"

***Flash***

"Now that I have Ollie, I want to plug back into the real world. Virtual reality bites."

***End Flash***

Chloe cracked a small smile before she hit the pavement.


End file.
